Bowing Down to Our Own Violence by Norman Solomon
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 21, 2007

Many
days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly stories about the
tragedy still dominated front pages and cable television. News of carnage
on a vastly larger scale -- the war in Iraq -- ebbs and flows. The overall
coverage of lethal violence, at home and far away, reflects the chronic
evasions of the American media establishment.

In the world of US mainline journalism, the
boilerplate legitimacy of official American violence overseas is a routine
assumption.

“The first task of the occupation remains
the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence,” George
Will wrote on April 7, 2004, in the Washington Post. But three
years later, his Newsweek column laments: “Vietnam produced an
antiwar movement in America; Iraq has produced an antiwar America.”

Current polls and public discourse -- in
spite of media inclinations to tamp down authentic anger at the war -- do
reflect an “antiwar America” of sorts. So, why is the ghastly war effort
continuing unabated? A big factor is the undue respect that’s reserved for
American warriors in American society.

When a mentally unstable person goes on a
shooting rampage in the United States, no one questions that such actions
are intrinsically, fundamentally and absolutely wrong. The media
condemnation is 100 percent.

However -- even after four years of a US war
in Iraq that has been increasingly deplored by the American public -- the
standard violence directed from the Pentagon does not undergo much
critical scrutiny from American journalists. The president’s war policies
may come under withering media fire, but the daily activities of the US
armed forces are subjected to scant moral condemnation. Yet, under orders
from the top, they routinely continue to inflict -- or serve as a catalyst
for -- violence far more extensive than the shooting sprees that turned a
placid Virginia campus into a slaughterhouse.

News outlets in the United States combine
the totally proper condemnation of killing at home with a notably
different affect toward the methodical killing abroad that is funded by
the US Treasury. We often read, see and hear explicit media commendations
that praise as heroic the Americans in uniform who are trying to kill, and
to avoid being killed, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In recent decades, the trends of war have
been clear. A majority of the dead -- estimated at 75 to 90 percent -- are
civilians. They are no less innocent than the more than 30 people who
suddenly died from gunshots at Virginia Tech.

It would be inaccurate to say that the bulk
of US media’s coverage accepts war launched from Washington. The media
system of the USA does much more than accept -- it embraces the high-tech
violence under the Pentagon’s aegis. Key reasons are cultural, economic
and political.

We grew up with -- and continue to see --
countless movies and TV programs showing how certain people with a
handgun, a machine gun or missiles are able to set wrongs right with
sufficiently deft and destructive violence.

The annual reports of large, medium and
small companies boast that the US Defense Department is a lucrative
customer with more and more to spend on their wares for war.

And the scope of political discourse,
reinforced by major news outlets, ordinarily remains narrow enough to
dodge the huge differences between “defense spending” and “military
spending.” More broadly, the big media rarely explore the terrain of basic
moral challenges to the warfare state.

Everyone who isn’t deranged can agree that
what happened on April 16, 2007, at the campus of Virginia Tech was an
abomination. It came about because of an individual’s madness. We must
reject it without the slightest equivocation. And we do.

But the media baseline is to glorify the US
military -- yesterday, today and tomorrow -- bringing so much bloodshed to
Iraq. The social dynamics in our own midst, fueling the war effort, are
spared tough scrutiny. We’re constantly encouraged to go along, avidly or
passively.

Yet George Will has it wrong. The first task
of government should not be “to establish a monopoly on violence.”
Government should work to prevent violence -- including its own.